Starlight on the Bulkhead
by StellarRequiem
Summary: After a particularly grueling mission Shepard gets a little too mouthy and ends up wildly hallucinating that she and Thane are, in fact, making love out on the bulkhead under the stars. Afterwards, Thane finds he has something he has tell her, and something that Shepard wants to say back. Romantic, but for mature audiences only!


**Author's Note:**

First of all, all my thanks to ZetSway for helping me revise this!

Secondly, Shepard is based loosely off of my first and favorite Shepard, Leah, but I tried to leave her as ambiguous as decent character building would allow since everyone has such a different take on what Shep is like.

Also, I'm still new to writing for this fandom and haven't written smut in eons, so knowing what people think would be enormously helpful to me as a writer, and any and all feedback is welcome, criticism included. That said, I hope you all enjoy the fic!

* * *

oOoOo

Shepard barges into life support.

"If I see one more husk I'll—"

"Kill something?"

His voice, coming from around the corner, carries the promise of a laugh, low and rough and rumbling—even husk by his standards—and very, very much appreciated.

"There's a thought," Shepard laughs, "EDI?"

"Yes Shepard."

"Could you lock the door?"

Thane stands and comes around the corner, leaning against the wall alongside the canisters that line it, and looks at her.

"Safety protocol does not allow that, Shepard," EDI replies.

Shepard sighs.

"Then can you set it to knock first, or something?"

"I can advise nonessential personnel that you and sere Krios are engaged in a private conversation before allowing admittance; if you deem it necessary."

"I deem it very necessary."

Thane shakes his head, but he's smiling.

"Of course, Shepard."

Shepard releases a sigh and starts working her hair out of the bun it's been knotted into. It's so unruly. But he likes it, and down it comes. Thane studies her, apparently caught between his better judgment and his preoccupation with watching her move.

"Siha."

"Yes."

She sighs as she yanks the last of her hair free, running her fingers across her scalp and shaking it out till it forms a thick, dark curtain on both sides of her face.

"I'm not sure I see the necessity of meeting here when you have—"

"Are you questioning me, Thane?"

She has to smile. It creeps into the corner of her mouth and into her tone as she says the words, and as she steps towards him.

"Of course not. You are, after all, my commanding officer."

As she makes her way to him she wrestles her way out of the ugly high collared gray and white top that is the least of the many evils Cerberus provided her in the way of clothing. Maybe she's a clueless shopper, because in all the stores she's tried on all the planets she's been to, if any of them are selling human compatible clothes she hasn't seen them. The fact that she gets distracted nine times out of ten by armor upgrades at the next kiosk or civilians yelling conspicuously about some problem that needs solving probably doesn't help.

She throws the . . . what does one even call this thing, jacket? Over his shoulder in the general vicinity of the table and misses. Apparently she can only throw something if it's a grenade. Thane glances at the heap it falls into in the corner with a bemused expression and she glowers at him. He feigns innocence instead and says nothing.

By now she is beside him. He wraps his arms around her. There's space between where her waistband begins and her undershirt ends that his hands fit into nicely.

"Then I cannot question you," he says, and she puts her own hands on his chest and kisses him. Part of him must still be saying that life support is an inappropriate place to engage in something so private, because his reply starts slow and chaste. He does that sometimes. It never lasts long. It certainly doesn't today. In the next moment he tightens his grip on her, folds her against him by closing his arms around her till her waist is pinned in by his elbows with his hands are racing up her back under her shirt. He lifts her onto her toes. She slips a finger under his collar and undoes it. His clothes are like a jigsaw puzzle in her mind; one that has to be done in reverse. Collar, jacket, buckle, buckle, buckle and _zipper. _ She's growing rather partial to that part.

Thane sets her down, but she isn't done with him. Not today. She's exhausted and putting off an inevitable confrontation with the geth that is now locked up down the hall, and her entire body hurts from going hand to hand with surprisingly powerful husks - they hit hard for something that's supposed to be dead. They only do so much damage that way, at least when there's only one of them, but she'd have a bruise or two if it weren't for the augmentations in her armor. These days she's running what is practically a full medical suite plus a nice moisturizer to combat the chafing that always happens . . . along with other things. She _might_ have added some of Mordin's special mix into the dispensers. But it makes more sense than trying to apply it by hand after the fact: though she kept it from Thane, she'd had a nasty, nasty rash that first night. And that had only been a brief pants-on encounter that ended when they realized that neither one of them knew enough about the other, their health, or the consequences to rush headlong into anything. As it stands now, she's just mixed it into every moisturizer she has. The mister in the shower. The armor. The bottle of hand lotion she'd stolen from that expensive hotel she and Liara had barged through on their way to the shadow broker's crazed henchman. Plus having an actual tube of it on hand for the places lotion shouldn't go.

She'd feel weirder about this application method if it didn't work like a charm. Not that it wouldn't qualify as a misuse of materials back at the Alliance. Not that she'd followed _all _of their rules at any point in her career. She grew up on the streets of Earth: she's seen too much of humanity to believe any of its efforts at law are infallible.

It's harder to dwell on that, however, when she's sucking on the ridges of his neck. His skin vibrates against her lips as a deep hum rolls up out of his throat. She traces the underside of the frill on his cheek with her pinky and his hands tighten on her waist, her back, sliding on down to her hips. She moves up his neck to his jaw and shapes her mouth around the edge of it, lets it lead her up to where her hand was the moment before. If he likes her little finger nail, what must he think of her tongue . . .

His response is gratifying and immediate. His hands shoot with lethal speed down to the backs of her thighs, he moves into her and lifts. He presses her back into the wall while she wraps her legs around him. Close. Tight. She clings to him a little more than she needs to and kisses him hard. Kisses him until he has to pull away for a moment to breathe—albeit against her neck with a hand up her shirt and his thumb tracing delightful circles across her breast—and then she presses her lips against the top of his head besides.

Thane snakes his arms around her and lifts her away from the wall. She refuses to get down, her legs still around his hips and her arms still around his shoulders. He kisses and then nips at her neck once before speaking.

"Siha," he breathes up towards her ear from where his mouth rests below her jaw.

She replies by ignoring him and ordering the lights down instead.

He leans his head back to look up into her face. He's still carrying her.

"Are you all right?" he asks gently.

"Fine."

Thane backs her up to the table and sets her down on it, settling himself between her thighs and taking her hands instead of her waist, holding them up between them, against the exposed scales of his chest. Shepard fixates on the occasional black specks among them, like freckles. Drell freckles. She loves them. She loves—

That's an unbidden thought. And a complicated one, far too complicated to let out of her mouth halfway through a suicide mission when there's a Krogan man-child in engineering on the verge of a breakdown, a geth in the AI core and the last message she's received had been a memo about eezo shipments from her asari ex-girlfriend turned Shadow Broker. Shepard can't afford to complicate this, too . . . not when the rest of her life is the dictionary definition of organized chaos. And then, on top of all of that, there's always the reapers; growling at her through the mouths of corrupted, puppet protheans.

Shepard swallows forcefully. She is _not_ fine.

Thane squeezes her hands until she looks up at him.

"I spent my afternoon running around in a Reaper," she mutters, "it reminded me of why we're fighting this war, that big, empty ship with no one living in it . . . and then I remembered that no one else cares. It's us and _Cerberus."_

"You still don't trust them."

"I can take Miranda and Jacob. The _Illusive Man_ can—" she never finishes the sentence, falling instead into an incoherent military growl better suited for open combat. Thane lets go of her hand to run her hair between his fingers.

"I don't disagree," he says, "but you will see us through, Shepard."

He makes sure she's looking at him when he says her name. She closes her eyes and rests her cheek against his chest. He stokes her hair.

Part of her wants her to stay here and be held by him. Part of her wants him to grab her by the aforementioned hair and ravish her until she needs to reapply the rash treatment and then do it some more. She compromises by turning her head to press her lips against his chest. Just once. And then again a moment later, working her way at intervals to his neck again until he pulls his head back to look at her and she can reach his mouth from where she's sitting. He's not actually that tall, so it's a wonderfully comfortable angle that they've settled at. She could sit right here and kiss him forever, until her lips are raw. She might do just that. She kisses him until his breathing sounds ragged and then works on his neck again. Puts her tongue against the underside of his frill again and enjoys the way he shudders. He lays her down on her back on the table, taking her hand again, and outlines her collarbone with his lips until she sighs and pulls his face up to hers to kiss him some more.

"Is this all you want to do?" he asks between kisses.

"For now."

"Whatever you wish," he says, and kisses her again, running his hands through her hair.

oOoOo

She is on top of him, having already removed his clothes to his waist, rocking her hips back and forth and working her mouth across his neck in the most delicious way. This is a moment so good it's hard to think of it in terms of remembering it later, as sweet as it will be. Living it is too visceral. Her hair falls down around his face, soft and dark, tickling his cheek. Her angular face is lovely in the partial darkness, expression focused and calm. She catches him looking at her and runs a hand across his now bare stomach up to his chest, then back down to his waistband, bends and kisses him with a wide open mouth and the wet heat of her tongue. Her hips roll. He groans. She smiles into the kiss and he opens his eyes long enough to see hers open, bright green and dilated - not unexpected, given the darkness.

All at once they widen. Her lashes flutter and she departs from him, shoots up like a bolt of lightning and turns to stare towards the glow of the AI core. The shutter is mostly down over the window, leaving a long thin line of light. She stares at it and then points.

"How did we get out here?" she demands, and then turns to look at him with alarm plastered all over her hardened, lovely face.

"Siha?"

He sits up beneath her, and she jumps, clamping her hands down across his shoulders to steady herself.

"We are still in life support," he tells her, and she stares at him in bewilderment, blinking rapidly.

"But it looks . . ." she trails off, and looks all around the room again. And then he understands.

"Where do you see us?" he asks her.

"We're . . . out on the . . . _bulkhead_. Orbiting . . . somewhere. There are so many stars . . ."

She is quite far gone. They'd been warned about this, but up until now it hasn't been a problem. It makes sense now that he thinks about it, she's had her mouth on him continuously all evening. He hadn't objected at the time. Now he' concerned.

As if to contradict this, a sudden burst of clarity breaks in her eyes. They narrow for a moment and she says:

"This is one of those hallucinations," in her own voice, in her rough tone, before an airier intonation takes over and she adds "it seems so _real" _in apparent awe. And then a sharp movement goes through her again, like a jump or a flinch, and she grabs his hands and pulls them up under her chin; looking into the wall as if it's a great distance.

"There's a comet, look."

"Siha . . ."

She looks back at him with a smile so wondrous it stills the words in his mouth. The reminder that it isn't real falters on his tongue, and he tilts his head back on the stretched canvas of his cot to look in the direction that she is. He sees a wall. But she is looking at the universe, and she has the loveliest smile. It looks like the smile of a woman older than she is, dimples at the corner of her mouth, white teeth between dark painted lips. He knows that she grew up in the slums and crowded city streets of the less glorious corners of Earth where tattooing is common: she has one on her hip, certainly. Sometimes he wonders if the unusual dark color she has chosen for her lips is makeup or ink.

"I wonder . . ." she says, and digs the nails of one hand into his shoulder while reaching skyward with the other, extending all of her fingers into the void. Well, towards the ceiling. He can only imagine what she's seeing.

Then all at once she retracts. She ducks down, pinning herself against him from thigh to breastbone, tucking her face into the curve of his shoulder where it meets his neck for a moment before turning her face away from him, offering him a face full of her hair. It smells like disinfectant, her shampoo, and the salt of sweating under a helmet, assault rifle ablaze in her hands, a shout bursting forth from her lips as she charges forward into the fray, her orders nothing more than the sound of his name for he always complies, wherever she calls him. Except now. She isn't well. Indulging her is . . . inappropriate.

She is clearly alarmed, holding him down against the cot she imagines is the gleaming bulkhead.

"What's holding us down?" she asks, and he frowns, reaching up to touch her hair so that she will turn around to look at him.

"Shepard," he says firmly, "Siha. You are hallucinating. It isn—"

"_Shhhhhh,"_ she hisses, and sits up, pulling him with her with a warm hand cupped around the back of his neck. Her undershirt is crooked, rolled halfway up her stomach. She looks at him and smiles from behind a wild curtain of hair. He imagines it flowing up around her, loose in zero-G.

"Don't tell me that," she says quietly but sternly, "let me enjoy this with you."

His heart does something strange in his chest.

Shepard puts a hand on his face, then looks into her imaginary stars.

"I wish you could see it."

When he meets her eyes again, he sees something far better. And he tells her so, the words slipping from between his lips before he can restrain them his body, for once, almost too in sync with his soul. Shepard looks back at him and kisses him hard, then smiles into his lips. He should make her stop doing that. Increased exposure can only make the effects last longer. But he can't bring himself to pull away. When he does, he kisses her forehead instead.

"Then come with me," he says, and slides out from under her and steps out onto the floor. She hisses between her teeth and lunges for his hand, holding it so tightly it's clear she thinks he's going to float away. "It's all right," he tells her, and offers his other hand. She takes it gingerly, and stands up on his cot, toes hanging over the edge. In her mind that is apparently where the safety of the ship ends, but in reality, she's at risk of tipping over. So he steps in against her and pulls her into his chest. She slings her legs around him again, hands shaking and digging into his shoulders, and she gasps when he steps them away from the bed. And then she laughs breathlessly . . . she so rarely laughs. It's surprisingly musical for a woman with such a rough voice. He responds by turning his face towards hers and seeking out the softness of her lips, better judgment be damned. Her hands stop shaking and she puts them on his face until she pulls away and whispers into his ear:

"Can you take my shirt off from there?"

"For you," he replies, "I can do anything."

oOoOo

They are free floating in the quiet envelope of the Normandy's shields, the blinding gleam of the bulkhead drifting alongside them a few feet away. How are they breathing? Somehow they are. The planet below is as blue and green as Earth used to be before the cities overwhelmed it, furious weather patterns wreaking havoc on its surface. It must be an environmental hazard, she can see it from here . . . away in the distance on the other side of the Normandy's hull is a spectacular peppering of stars, some twinkling and some steady and some looking ready to burst, and she thinks she can see all the colors of infrared and ultraviolet, the cathedral spires of gasses and stardust climbing away into infinity on all side of them, nothing below her but eternity and galaxies far beyond her own, even more wonders to discover, and horrors lurking in dark space.

She drifts closer to Thane though he's already holding her, and he spins her till she's breathless, the whole wondrous and terrifying expanse of the universe swirling past her in freefall, like flying. She runs her hand across his head as he slows, fingers hopping from the spurs and ridges along his skull like ski slopes. She traces a stripe from his temple down the back of his neck with the edge of her nail so that he shivers, and then she follows it up and over his shoulder, down to his collarbone where she bends to plant a kiss, sending him off balance, tipping backwards for a moment in the freefall of antigravity before righting himself so that their up and down aligns with that of the Normandy beside them. She's such a beautiful ship regardless of who built her.

Thane places a finger against Shepard's lips to stay her when she moves to kiss him again, and they race though somehow breathable vacuumed together so quickly that she seems to leave her stomach behind, backwards for her and forwards for him. She cries out like a schoolgirl, a sound she didn't know she could still make, as Newton's laws inexplicably break and they once again come to a stop. He changes the position of his hands and settles between her legs as if they were sitting and standing again. Then he slides them under her shirt, over her breasts, pausing to put his mouth on one eager nipple and then the other as he slips it over her head. In this moment, she is particularly in love with his tongue.

But surely there is something solid beneath her again—courtesy of Thane there is certainly something solid in front of her—how did they get back to the bulkhead? Open space is disorienting. . . it reminds her . . . _Oh. _

She sucks in a horrible gasping breath that breaks his concentration along with the movement of his tongue. He lifts his head and takes her face in his hands.

"Shepard."

She gasps again, breathes too forcefully. Now she's going to hyperventilate, she has to stop, she has to make herself stop because she is still breathing, right? S_he's still breathing—_

"Shepard, listen to me," his voice is so lovely but how is she here without a helmet? Even with a helmet? She'd said she'd never spacewalk again, this airless place wants to kill her, to freeze her and break her and make Miranda put her together again, assuming she is even who she started as in the first place—

Thane brings her face up to his and calls her by her first name.

It shocks her into attention. Even those who know her best don't really do that. She's just been Shepard as long as she can remember. The gang had called her that. Her commanders. The other N7 recruits. That's the name her squad had screamed on Akuze before it all gotten so quiet. It's how she'd introduced herself to the crew that had become like the only family she's ever known. Even Anderson calls her Shepard off duty, and he's the closest thing she's ever had to a father. It's strange now to hear it from Thane of all people, but she doesn't mind it. The sound of her name creates a pocket of silence in her racing mind.

"It's all right," he says.

"Promise me."

She blurts the words. They sound disconcertingly vulnerable in her own ears, especially out here under all of these stars and all of this distance in this bone shattering cold that isn't cold, that's already killed her once.

"I promise," he says, "I would protect you with my life. Nothing here will hurt you."

"I don't want your life," she tells him, and for a moment she feels like crying, for the first time in . . . years. Maybe a decade a more now. Earth had beaten the tears out of her long before the Alliance had. Whatever it is that's happening in her brain that is bringing the universe to life around her must be going to her head. _Obviously._ That thought doesn't even make sense.

"You have it anyway," Thane says, bringing her thoughts back to him, and he pulls her into his chest, wrapping his arms around her and rubbing his hands across her bare back. She had wondered when he'd first reached for her what scales would feel like. Smooth and pleasant, as it turns out. And he's even reasonably warm, as if he carries the desert sun of the home he never saw along with him.

"Stay out here with me," she breathes into his neck.

"Of course, Siha," he replies, and she pulls him down on top of her, reclining against the bulkhead while taking deep, impossible breaths. He kisses her neck while the oxygen moves into her throat, again and again, his hand racing up and down her side leaving goosebumps in its wake. Up to where his mouth had been before her flashback with a pinch and a delicious rub, his other hand cradling her head. His fingers trace shivering lines from breast to neck to navel to her waistband, down the front of her civvies to where the way biology has arranged his fingers is most dearly appreciated. He moves slowly, gently, then roughly and then gently again in slow circles pressurized by the elastic in her pants pinning down his hand. She brings her knees up to his ribcage. He nips at her earlobe. She arches her back off the bulkhead. The hand cradling her head moves to trace the outline of her straining spine while he switches to sucking on her neck and his other hand slips deeper in her pants and the underwear beneath them —a nice pair she had managed to track down just for him after an unasked for tip from Miranda—slips inside her up to the last knuckle and then escapes again. Moves back and forth and up and then leaves. What a tease. She bites her lip and looks up into the stars between fluttering eyelashes, and runs her hands across his chest and then rolls him over on his back.

It's her turn.

oOoOo

Shepard does not seem entirely conscious of where the table, where he has placed her in the course of her waking dream, actually sits since in her mind the whole vast expanse of the Normandy is beneath her, but she almost rolls him onto the floor as a result. He catches them, but a quick kiss to preoccupy her and some scrambling to right them later, somehow Thane ends up on his back with his feet towards the wall instead of his head. Shepard settles on top of him and licks beneath his frill again—he absolutely needs to stop her doing that or neither of them will ever return to sanity—and grinds her hips in slow gyrating circles across the most sensitive parts of him.

He calls out her name, or his name for her, something, he isn't even certain, and she chuckles a little in his ear. She rakes her hands down his chest, running a finger down his breastbone, and then brings them gently back again, tracing every stripe she sees and following the ridges on his throat with the tickling tip of her fingernail. Between the heat of her and the feel of her it's almost as excruciatingas it is pleasurable. He grips the table and puts his tongue to the excited rise on her left breast when she bends low enough for him to do so; and she stays there a moment to enjoy it, bucking her hips in a rough and sudden surge of hard muscle and body heat, and then retracts. Climbs off of him and backwards between his legs until her back is against the wall, and slips her hands into his waistband, pulling his clothes the rest of the way off. She moves to set them beside her, no throwing now that they are spinning through her imagined galaxy together. True, she drops them off the side of the table not realizing that there's nothing there, but the floor is usually where they end up when he's with her. He likes that element of chaos. Of sloppy disarray, nothing neatly hung or folded, just cast aside as she makes her way to him like she does her enemies across the battlefield. She abandons her own pants as well.

As naked as he, Shepard bends to put her mouth on him, out in the open now and straining to reach her, in the way that is most difficult to resist, a finger tracing patterns of scales between his thighs. And it pains him to stop her.

"Siha."

"Don't question your commander," she retorts just before her lips engulf the end of him. Most of him. All of him with the grip of her hand involved, engaged in the same luscious pulling and sliding as her lips.

It suddenly becomes very easy to rationalize the details of anatomy and where venom secretions are least prevalent or potent to justify allowing her to stay exactly where he is.

Thane sits up enough to tangle a hand in her long hair, but it's all he can do not to let his eyes roll so far back in his skull that they drag his head off his shoulders. She pulls on him with the near and ever present threat of her teeth but never grazes him, entangles him with her tongue, as adept with the soft hot walls of her mouth as she is with a weapon, pulling against sensitive flesh. Paying him back in kind, however, she does not stay there long. She goes and leaves him chest heaving and disheveled, head lolling off the end of the table.

She smirks when he lifts his head and reaches for her, as she straddles him again. She doesn't sit down on him, not so that he can reach inside her, but hovers just out of reach knowing full well what it is that it does to him. It's there for all to see. She places her hand over his and follows its progress along her side. He admires the ridges of her ribcage and the scars she still bears with searching fingertips while Shepard looks away over his head and takes a deep breath, staring off into the void.

She closes her eyes, solar wind echoes slipping through the Normandy's shields in her mind to warm her face, too radiant to burn. He imagines her again with her hair afloat, gravity no longer pulling on her mouth to prevent it from becoming a smile, watches as she inhales real air in a hallucinated paradise, her chest expanding steadily. Perhaps she is facing death. He wishes he could absorb some of that courage from her… it is a darker concept now that he has so much—his son and this blinding warrior angel—to lose.

"Siha—" He is on the verge of telling her something dangerous. On his back on a table he also eats his meals off of, it's hardly the right time to say what he is feeling. But she is among the stars. In her mind's eye, perhaps this is a beautiful time to say what it is in his mind. But she stops him when she opens her eyes, bends, and kisses him one more time. He doesn't respond well to it, hoping to discourage her, but his heart tightens in his chest. He touches her face, her sharp cheekbone, the place where she'd told him she'd had a scar once before Cerberus rebuilt her. Now she has new ones, fading quickly, it seems, since they met. She is as beautiful without them as with them.

When she sits up again she resettles around the length of him, a hand guiding him inside of her while sinks so far around him until her heart seems near, her hands resting on his chest. Up and down, she rises and falls like the tide on the sea, close and tight and warm. She flicks her hips sometimes as she descends just to torture him, to pull his breath shuddering from his chest, and then she lays low across him. Switches to forward and back, forwards and back, and he holds her hips but cannot steer her. He cannot reign her in or restrain her or hope to guide her when he is so helpless against the feeling of her. Sometimes her movement is slow, but then she quickens, taking his heartbeat with her; coming down on him in quick aggressive bursts like assault rifle fire. She draws his breath from between gritted teeth and the call of her body and her soul encased in it, all equally warm and welcoming, entice his own hips up off the table. He pushes himself as far into her as he can go, as she wants to take him. Her voice rushes in a quiet breathless sound from between her teeth.

But then she slows again. Painful slowness. Increments of millimeters down the length of him that bring his hands to the edges of the table, nails tearing at metal. He braces his feet against the wall to be nearer to her while she slides and pulls across him, her fingers running down his neck and under his frill. She says his name, and his heart - other parts of him, too - fills to near overflowing. Hisses between her teeth and bites her lip.

She's positioned now so that she is over him on her hands and knees while he digs the soles of his feet against the wall to lift his hips up to her, to bring her back onto him when she seems too far away.

"I wish you could see it," she says a second time, whispers while a shudder wracks his body, near enough now to bursting that hissheer will to hold out for her is the only thing keeping him together.

"Tell me then," he gasps. She shakes her head and brushes the end of her nose along his jawline.

"I'm not as eloquent as you."

She comes down hard around him and tightens, her fingers digging into him like an echo of what sweeter parts of her are doing. He has to dig his own fingernails into the table again, and maybe a prayer escapes him. Shepard looks disconcerted, shyalmost despite her unabashed nakedness and the absolute power she holds over him and –even hallucinating—over herself. Her eyes are far away as she moves through a series of quick, controlled motions and then sighs as she sinks down slowly again. Thane makes a sound he doesn't mean to. It's an echo: With every move that she makes, his body and soul are screaming.

"I want to know," he chokes, unsure how he is managing to speak anything but her name.

She bites her lip, and moving only her hips to keep the motion going, bends down by his ear, and whispers to him a galaxy of stars and a planet like a blue marble in the void, the swirl of color invisible to the naked eye that she is sure she can see, supernovas caught in time, the light they emit like a eulogy. And beyond it darkness and everywhere the risk of falling away into eternity, but even beyond that, other galaxies and other worlds, places she imagines are untouched by Reapers and by fear, bursting in life in ways they wouldn't even recognize. She is so beautiful in ways that have nothing to do with her battle hardened, elegant face.

Her speech falters to gasps and groans, cutting off her huskily whispered monologue, and he can restrain himself no longer, joining her so that they fall spent one on top of the other in the middle of her hallucinated dream now told in gasping, airless breaths.

"Can you see it now?" she whispers. And her face above him looking down, chest rising and falling so fast, relieved, fulfilled exhaustion taking over her still dilated, but calmer green eyes— He sees galaxies around her head like a halo. A comet in the distance with a green and blue tail.

"I can," he gasps, and she smiles. For that he has to kiss her just once more.

oOoOo

They are woken by EDI's voice, announcing that Shepard's usual waking time has arrived, and that Daniels may be coming up momentarily for something. Shepard, wrapped in Thane's blanket and crammed onto his cot with him, scrambles to retrieve her clothes.

"Breakfast at 06:20?" she asks, and he nods, almost a bow.

"Gladly," he replies. Thane doesn't look as sleepless as she feels. He has the gleam in his eye of a man who has been awake for hours, watching over her while she dreamed, as she—

She pauses halfway around the corner, already on her way out. She turns around again to face him and says:

"Thane?"

"Yes, Siha?"

"Did I spend the entire night hallucinating that we were out on the bulkhead?"

"You did," he concedes, looking guilty. As if _he _needs to apologize for sending her on a wild ride that from his perspective must have been nothing short of ridiculous. She grimaces.

"Sorry."

"No!" his answer is too rushed, too firm, so that it takes her by surprise. He softens his tone as he continues, but his voice is rougher than usual. "Don't apologize."

She isn't entirely sure what to say. So she nods, and leaves. She narrowly misses Daniels on her way out, though she does draw a knowing look from Garrus, who she very nearly collides with as he's leaving the showers. With her hair in the state it's in, it's not altogether surprising that he'd connect the dots.

Thane joins her in her quarters much later, hours of planet scanning she's not sure why _she _is supposed to oversee when EDI is perfectly capable of launching her own probes later, for the duration of which she had endured subtly needling remarks from Chambers.

_How are you feeling today commander?_

_The crew is doing well, they're feeling very talkative today. I got the impression that Garrus might one to speak to you but I'm not sure, he seemed preoccupied . . ._

Eventually Shepard had sent her on a wild goose chase to check on Jack. That seemed to shut her up. A good thing, too, or else her next assignment was going to be to go reactivate the geth. Shepard doesn't usually mind Chambers . . . when she minds her own business. She does not need her sex life analyzed by her . . . secretary.

Thane arrives to find her staring into her empty fish tank. She'd killed the last batch last week. How hard can it be to remember to feed fish? Thane had consoled her with something along the lines of saving the galaxy being distracting, perhaps she should get a pet with a voice that can remind her when it's hungry. It had been good advice: her new hamster, who she refers to as 'The Spacer" because of how he had been labeled in store, is much better than the company than the fish besides.

"This thing looks empty," she tells him as he comes to stand beside her. He makes a low sound of consideration.

"Perhaps they sell fish VI's," he suggests. "Those don't need feeding."

She moves as if to punch him in the arm. Without looking at her, he reaches up and catches her fist in his hand. His gaze is lost in the water, the lights of the tank bringing out the green in his eyes. He looks over at her when he catches her smiling. His expression is serious, however, his brow heavy and thoughtful.

"What's on your mind, Thane?"

She takes his hands. He looks down at them before speaking.

"Do you remember what you said," he begins slowly, voice a long, low rumble, "when I told of my feelings for you?"

She does remember, not as clearly as she wishes she could. Not as clearly as he probably is, though he is keeping the thoughts to himself.

"I said that I wasn't sure we could call it love, but that there was something between us."

"Would you say the same now?" he asks, looking into her face. Her heart does something that would probably flag her medical readouts if she were in her armor. Her tongue ties itself in a knot. When she unwinds it she isn't able to respond to his question, an echo of something she'd thought last night on the tip of her tongue but unable to escape. Love? Is that what this is?

She touches his face instead, channeling her feelings through her hands.

"What brings this on?" she asks, and he turns away to stare into the empty fish tank.

"Last night," he begins, and then corrects himself, shaking his head and turning back to her once again having settled on simpler words, "You have a beautiful mind_, _Siha. I'm glad to be a part of it."

He has no idea. Maybe she's had no idea. Shepard swallows hard.

"That you are," she says, and steps closer to him. His hands settle on her waist when she reaches for his face again, when he places his forehead against hers. And then she tells him. She says it. _ I love you, Thane. _

"Shepard," he breathes.

And he kisses her, long and passionate. She doesn't want him to stop. But he does. Steps back and clears his throat.

"Perhaps we should limit that," he says, "lest we end up on the bulkhead again."

He laughs at the groan that Shepard emits, and catches her in his arms.


End file.
